The first in a series of character-driven World War II noir detective mysteries set in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from an award-winning journalist.
It is the summer of 1940 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a city that has become a bustling strategic port for the war raging in Europe. In a wealthy South End neighbourhood, the daughter of a local Royal Navy commander has just been found murdered. Her father—who just happens to be the number-one suspect—and mother are missing. To complicate matters for Halifax Police Detective Mick Blackwell, the Royal Navy has claimed jurisdiction over his investigation.
On the other side of the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill has just green-lit Operation Fish, an audacious gamble to ship Britain's entire gold reserves across the storm-tossed, U-boat—infested North Atlantic to Halifax to prevent them from falling into Hitler's hands. If Churchill's gambit fails and the gold is sunk or captured, Britain won't have the resources to continue the fight, and Germany will triumph by default.
A troubled soul and veteran of World War I who still suffers from "shell shock," Blackwell must somehow connect the dots from his now off-the-books investigation back to Operation Fish, solve more than one murder, and foil a Nazi plot. His investigation will take him from the "cottage" mansions of Marlborough Woods, to the segregated Black community of Africville, into the heart of a Nazi espionage cell in Boston, and back to Halifax to change the course of the war's history. In between, Blackwell will finally find the love he hadn't known he was missing. But is Vera really who she claims to be?
Returning to the world of his award-winning non-fiction account Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War, award-winning journalist Stephen Kimber's Traitor's Game is a propulsive, clever, and atmospheric work of noir fiction, and the first in an enthralling new series.
